Making "Earth"

Since I'd had the idea of Benjamin holding the Earth for some time, I first needed a picture of Benjamin suitable for manipulating. Unfortunately, two things made this difficult. First, my photo scanner is broken. Second, Benjamin is exceedingly uncooperative when it comes to posing. I couldn't do much about the second item, but I was able to resolve the first by borrowing a digital camera (the Nikon CoolPix 900) from my friend Monty. I think the camera's resolution was quite good and it certainly made this process easy. Here are some pictures from the photo session.

I selected the following image to start with.

This shows Benjamin holding a beach ball on his head, and despite the distracting background has promise, mainly because his hands are in the natural position for holding the ball of the Earth.